Just finished reading Daniel Menaker,’s “A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation,” and I’m not sure what to make of it. Recommended by a friend who’d read a review, I’m waiting for his assessment as well. There are a few good tidbits about how a conversation develops between people, the stages Survey, Discovery, Risks and Roles, which I found interesting and am now paying attention to when meeting new people, and observing my/our conversations. Menaker using an interesting technique of taping one of his own conversations with a friend/colleague (with their permission, of course!) and breaks it down into these component parts; that is somewhat fascinating. There’s some history on conversation that’s mildly interesting and he casts about quite a few stereotypes. Be interested to see what others think if they pick up the book.

In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of flying this month, so it gave me a chance to catch up on something even as a bit esoteric as this. Probably not for most except those most fascinated by the study of human interaction.

As usual, available on my favorite, half.com and amazon.com.

Just finished reading Tim Sanders’ book, “Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends.” Tim is the Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and his book will push your “abundancy thinking” to the next level. For those of you who have heard me speak about abundance, I’m a big believer in advocating for an abundant life and abundant world. By that I don’t mean “you can have it all!” Abundancy vs. scarcity is the place you come from in terms of how you approach your world; you either see it as a place of scarcity, that doesn’t have enough to go around and everyone needs to get theirs or someone else will get it. Or you’re an abundancy person, who gives away what they have to offer the world, believing that the world will mirror your giving and give back even more. Tim’s book advances this concept in the workplace. Read it and I’m sure you’ll find it challenging, informative and, hopefully, useful if you’re willing to take some risks.

Seth Godin: Marketing Genius – A colleague and friend of mine turned me on to Seth Godin’s site awhile back; I find something useful all the time. If you’re not receiving Seth Godin’s blog, you’re really missing out. Guaranteed to stretch your mind (the kind of experiences we believe keep us creative, exciting and intellectually-stimulated!), sign-up for a test drive and you’re bound to find something in Seth’s words of wisdom as he challenges your thinking.

More to come in future posts. Just a few to get you thinking and experimenting. If you have favorites of your own, pass them along and we’ll take a look and post here what we think our connected world might find useful and interesting.

Books, Tapes and More – If you’ve not visited half.com, you’re missing a great on-line resource for books, tapes, books on DVD, etc. Half is a resource where you can find all this stuff at drastically reduced price as part of the underground economy. Leading books for sometimes pennies on the dollar because someone else is passing along their good stuff after they’ve learned from it. Fast delivery right to your door, a wide range of offerings and an easy-to-use site… customer service at its best.

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Boards – Whether serving on one, serving one or considering either, BoardSource is the definitive site for information. If you’re one of our clients, we use them all the time to help with best practices, training info, books and related tools. They’re customer-service driven and we love the range of information they make available to use to help you and your organization.

Another site from our ongoing list of good things we’ve found on the ‘net.

News You Can Use – If you’re in California and not checking out Rough and Tumble, you’re not really reading the news each day; this site tallies and prepares all the California-profiled news for you long before you sip your first cup o’ Joe. It’s a great aggregator of sites with political, economic, education, environmental, healthcare and other topics of interest. And, with California a big trend-setting state, it’s useful to see what’s happening and how it might affect other parts of our nation, and our world.